Well, we have a server in our house that runs windows 2000 it hosts a variety of services, web dev (IIS, PHP, MySQL) , ftp, directory sharing, spam filter, backups, game servers, print server etc.

However, with up to 9 computers connecting to it at once its starting to struggle a bit and seems to have got itself into a bit of a mess. I have fedora core 6 on dvd, i was wondering if it would be worth my time starting over and migrating it over to linux?

On the same hardware fed 6 will IMHO also struggle.

What sort of spec is the box, mainly how much RAM do you have?

One advantage yoiu will get is moving away from iis 5.* to apache if you are using IIS, however you can also use apache on windows.

its a Athlon XP 1800+ with 1Gb of RAM

As its being used as a server go with something like Debian or even Ubuntu as its debian with out all the fuss

i tried ubuntu server this morning.. then i realised its command line.. and i am too much of a linux noob to deal with that! So i am writing this post from fedora, with all of the services i had running on win2k on linux except for the game servers.. which were not important anyway

so now its all set up make it boot into command line and use the extra resources for the services

ubuntu is a lot more friendly than fedora for a secure server, esp as fedora isn't a "stable" distro. Also when configuring things in fed requires some use of the CLI.

If you are a noob, as you put it, I'd seriously forget it and stick to windows. Get an old machine and get yourself familiar with linux before you take the plunge if the services are important to you.

Persoanlly I would have just added another 1Gb of RAM as if the services are killing that then they will kill it just the same on Linux.

You mention your Window$$ server has spam filtering, so I am guessing that it hosts your email (Exchange ??). If you plan to do the same on Linux, it's not that straight forward unless you don't mind a quick and steep learning curve. My Linux server (HP Proliant with 4 X Xeon PIII 550's, 2GB RAM and 10 hard drives split in 1 RAID 5 array, and 1 RAID 0), currently runs my email consisting of IMAP4 access, spam filtering, AV filtering, content filtering, custom criteria filtering, squirrelmail webmail. I will say, it was a total ar$e to get all this working together, but I am really pleased with the result. It also runs a couple of Web sites, DNS, DHCP, shared folders. I use SUSE 10.0 on that box, but have FC4 (old I know!) on another. I couldn't really get on with debian based distros, and prefer RPM based.

What's the spec of your server?

Be sure that this is the way you want to go. It may be easier in the long run just to throw some more resources at your Win based server. I take it it acts as a DC as well? If this is the case, you will loose this. Also, any Win based apps on the server won't work. Be sure this is what you want to do. Might be worth running it up on a Virtual machine first to get familiar, and to try the important bits out to make sure you are happy with it before going for gold !

Good luck

The the server acted as a proxy for email. So you have the choice of using the spam filter or bypassing it and connecting directly to the mail server.

The machine is a Athlon XP 1800+, 2 x 40Gb HDD, 1Gb DDR 2100. Its an old box that has been my server for a while. I decided to take the dive into linux because i am pretty good with OSX and OSX server so terminal is nothing new to me. I just like the backup of a GUI. At the end of the day, if linux does not work i can go back to windows.. the server is fine down for a while.

There is no point throwing money into the server as its old now, it has a replacement but until i get my new 24" imac its replacement is my main PC :P

I have to say.. im very impressed with fedora, its easy to install, easy to use, quick and makes a damn nice change to windows

You wait until they throw in a feature they want to test for the next red hat release.